Interstellar Travel

36% of Americans believe in UFOs, that is, though most Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are actually explained as such mundane things as misidentified meteorological phenomena, astronomical phenomena, aircraft, and so on, there's ~ 5% that are as yet unexplained and that these unexplained UFOs are machines from somewhere other than Earth.

Have you ever observed a UFO that has never been sufficiently explained? Do you believe that some unexplained UFOs are machines from somewhere other than Earth? If so, why (what are your reasons or arguments for believing so)? What evidence is there to support your belief?

Replies to This Discussion

Eyewitness evidence is the very worst evidence there is . The witnesses , as described by you were level headed and reliable , so what ? That is that is an astoundly bad reason to attribute this sighting's causation to anything other than a natural or man made phenomenon .

That would certainly be my position. But, when a close friend, an eyewitness, says, "there was something up there", I have to give that testimony a lot of weight - second, perhaps, to my having seen it for myself. He knows the difference between spotlights on a cloud and a physical object with shape (as some of the frames in the clip show). And the experience was shared by many, unrelated witnesses - ALL of whom, I understand, are equally convinced.

I'm not saying that this is anything LIKE proof of extraterrestrials, but, if all these people can somehow be equally misled into believing they've seen physical objects, I'd like to know, with an equal degree of veracity, not what it wasn't but WHAT IT WAS that could simultaneously fool all these people.

Don't see the relevance of the clip, though. It would be analogous if we were asked to see if we could spot the gorilla.

Couple things about the report, what does Venus have to do with sightings at midnight and 2 AM? Venus is ONLY ever visible just after sunset and just before sunrise. We're talking the MIDDLE of the night here, when Venus is NEVER visible (at this latitude).

It's pretty clear that they were told to get SOME kind of explanation out there to counter the "adverse media comment".

I had forgotten about the squid boats. They would have been over the horizon, but I guess that's the nature of mirages. I had never heard of night time mirages, but, they do, it seems, exist. I'd consider mirages to be a pretty weak guess, but it's probably the best explanation available.

I understand the study but, sorry, I still don't see the relevance. What are the flight crew, guests, and ATC staff supposed to have missed by concentrating too hard on the objects?

It seems to me that such government reports produced under pressure too often reach conclusions which are weak or completely unjustified. Perhaps they feel that "we acknowledge this phenomenon but we don't know what the hell it was" is unacceptable when often it's the only sensible answer.

"Alien of the Gaps" - We don't know what it was, therefore [e.g. atmospheric anomalies] DIDIT

"no physical objects were detected (by multiple radars) at the time of the film crew sightings"

The report:

"10. The Wellington Radar Controller alerted the captain that there was a strong radar return about 35 miles to the port of the aircraft. The aircraft crew observed on that bearing a very bright light which they variously described as a bright orb, pear-shaped with a reddish tinge. . ."

Hmmm. ANYWAY The report is interesting reading even though it does seem to contradict itself occasionally. The excerpt agrees with what I knew of the incident (35 years ago) - that the sightings, the plane's radar, and Wellington radar all corroborated each other.

HOWEVER the report and other material I've read about night-time mirages tells me that (contrary to my earlier statement that radar does not pick up light beams) the sightings (and the detail of the shapes) plus both radar returns could ALL be explained by mirages. The problem was that it was/is perfectly reasonable - almost axiomatic) to interpret a radar return as a physical object.

Thanks for reminding me about the squid boats. Perhaps what should have been done 35 years ago was a fly-over of the squid boats for a comparison of the light patterns with the aberrations.